Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, and Snapchat. These are all essential tools for celebrities to engage with their fans, promote their new work, speak their mind, and connect with a larger audience. Social media can make your career, but do not forget that it can break your career just as fast irrespective of who you are. If not, faster. 

Fame and shame are neighbors. Next door neighbors! I strongly believe that next to the house of fame, is the house of shame. If becoming a celebrity or a popular figure is rarely an overnight success, the fall, however, can be sudden especially in the new age (the social media age). 

Some celebrities ruined their own career with their own hands, all thanks to social media. If truly experience is the best teacher, it will be wise for you to learn from their mistakes because you can become popular in the twinkle of an eye. 

Justine Sacco

Justine Sacco was traveling from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013, Justine Sacco, 30 years old and the senior director of corporate communications at IAC, began tweeting acerbic little jokes about the indignities of travel. There was one about a fellow passenger on the flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport:

“ ‘Weird German Dude: You’re in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.’ — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals.”

Then, during her layover at Heathrow:

“Chilly — cucumber sandwiches — bad teeth. Back in London!”

And on December 20, before the final leg of her trip to Cape Town:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

She chuckled to herself as she pressed send on this last one, then wandered around Heathrow’s international terminal for half an hour, sporadically checking her phone. No one replied, which didn’t surprise her. She had only 170 Twitter followers.

Sacco boarded the plane. It was an 11-hour flight, so she slept. When the plane landed in Cape Town and was taxiing on the runway, she turned on her phone. Right away, she got a text from someone she hadn’t spoken to since high school: “I’m so sorry to see what’s happening.” Sacco looked at it, baffled. from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013, Justine Sacco, 30 years old and the senior director of corporate communications at IAC, began tweeting acerbic little jokes about the indignities of travel. There was one about a fellow passenger on the flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport:

“ ‘Weird German Dude: You’re in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.’ — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals.”

Then, during her layover at Heathrow:

“Chilly — cucumber sandwiches — bad teeth. Back in London!”

And on Dec. 20, before the final leg of her trip to Cape Town:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

She chuckled to herself as she pressed send on this last one, then wandered around Heathrow’s international terminal for half an hour, sporadically checking her phone. No one replied, which didn’t surprise her. She had only 170 Twitter followers.

Sacco boarded the plane. It was an 11-hour flight, so she slept. When the plane landed in Cape Town and was taxiing on the runway, she turned on her phone. Right away, she got a text from someone she hadn’t spoken to since high school: “I’m so sorry to see what’s happening.” Sacco looked at it, baffled.

Then another text: “You need to call me immediately.” It was from her best friend, Hannah. Then her phone exploded with more texts and alerts. And then it rang. It was Hannah. “You’re the No. 1 worldwide trend on Twitter right now,” she said.

Sacco’s Twitter feed had become a horror show. 

The furor over Sacco’s tweet had become not just an ideological crusade against her perceived bigotry but also a form of idle entertainment. The complete ignorance of her predicament for those 11 hours lent the episode both dramatic irony and a pleasing narrative arc. As Sacco’s flight traversed the length of Africa, a hashtag began to trend worldwide: #HasJustineLandedYet.

A Twitter user did indeed go to the airport to tweet her arrival. He took her photograph and posted it online. “Yup,” he wrote, “@JustineSacco HAS, in fact, landed at Cape Town International. She’s decided to wear sunnies as a disguise.”

She eventually lost her job, ridiculed all around the world and her Twitter was full of hate messages.

Anthony Weiner

If Anthony Weiner knew how to use Twitter properly, his career may have taken a different turn. In 2011, Anthony Weiner was a well-respected and highly successful politician. At 27 years old, he was the youngest person to win a New York City Councilman seat and he then went on to win and hold the seat of New York’s 9th congressional district for seven years in a row. He worked hard for underprivileged kids and public housing, and he was really working to make NYC a better place to live. But, unfortunately, Mr. Weiner had a Twitter mishap.

In May 2011, Weiner accidentally posted a picture to his Twitter wall that was meant to be sent privately to a woman he was sexting with online. At first, he said he had been hacked and denied posting the picture, but later admitted that he had been exchanging racy photos and messaging with that woman for over three years. He resigned from congress on June 21, 2011, less than a month after the picture was posted online.
Source: Wikipedia

Gilbert Gottfried

Gilbert Gottfried, a character actor best known for movies like Problem Child 1 and 2, infamously known as the voice of the parrot Iago in Aladdin, and more famously for booking the voice for the Aflac duck. But he lost that voice in 2011 and a whole lot of money after tweeting a series of offensive tweets joking about the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed Japan. Less than an hour after seeing the tweets, Gottfried was fired. The tsunami left more than 2,400 people dead and was certainly no laughing matter.
Source: Wikipedia